J.S. Jenks Elementary School hosts toy drive to support victims of Hurricane Sandy

On Oct. 29, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey and turned the lives of many people upside-down. Lives were lost, homes were destroyed, and day-to-day normalcy vanished.

Almost three weeks later, many of those people are still without power and sufficient food and water.

People are down and out.

Adults can’t go to work.

Children can’t go to school.

In an effort to restore a sense of normalcy for those people devastated by Hurricane Sandy, J.S. Jenks Elementary School is partnering with Ocean City Intermediate School and hosting a community Toy Drive to support those families in need.

Mary Lynskey, principal of J.S. Jenks Elementary, said that the “Chestnut Hill/Mount Airy community will be asked to donate toys to fill a school bus.”

On top of the toys, each Jenks class will sponsor a frozen turkey to be donated to a family in need. The school will host a Dress Down Day to sponsor a Shelter Box for displaced families.

Lynskey said that Jenks’ faculty would also be contributing to “a staff-to-staff gift basket for the faculty of the school we adopted in Ocean County, N.J.”

When all the toys, food and other essentials are collected, on Dec. 6, students from Jenks’ Arts and Music (JAM) program and staff chaperones will deliver the bus load of donations to Ocean City Intermediate School and perform for them in a brief assembly.

After the Toy Drive, Jenks will continue its relationship with Ocean City Intermediate by hosting two other donation drives: a food drive in February and a school supply drive in May.

“We are very excited about this budding partnership between the two schools,” Lynskey said.

Until Dec. 5, you can drop off donations in the foyer of Jenks Elementary School.

Upcoming Events

March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at The Dixon House at St. Paul’s Church, 22 E. Chestnut Hill Ave. Guest speaker Ellen Evans, an eldercare professional with 20 years of experience and a current family member[...]

runs from March 2 – June 14 Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine St. Framing Fraktur is a three-month celebration of the delightfully detail manuscript art known as fraktur, made by German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania[...]